There has been developed in the art machinery for storing printed newspaper items or inserts on pallets in a spiral array or stack. Representative of such machinery are Felix Dietrich U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,000,806 issued Jan. 4, 1977 and 4,062,537 issued Dec. 13, 1977. In these patents the items are stacked in a spiral sequence around the center post of a pallet assembly which center post serves as a conveyance member that engages a trolley assembly for transport. As outlined in the former patent, the items are stacked in a spiral stack and then destacked from the bottom of the stack by a complex feeding mechanism.
Among the problems with this prior art are the two significant disadvantages (1) that the pallet structure is expensive and complex and (2) that the weight of the stack must be encountered in feeding off the bottom and thus it is not easy to get high speed performance as necessary to feed inserts directly from the stack into on-line newspaper streams having speeds of about 60,000 items per hour. Other problems include stack stability in transit, storage space requirements and lack of flexibility in stacking heights which limits utility of a given pallet design to a narrow range of paper sheet thicknesses and sizes.
Among the objects of this invention is the general objective to correct the aforesaid deficiencies of the prior art by providing improved paper item stacking apparatus and methods.
More specific objects of the invention includes the provision of simple, low-cost, universal pallet structures easy to transport and efficient to stack and process.
One object of the invention is to increase processing speeds at which stored newspaper inserts may be taken from storage and fed into newspaper streams.
Another object of the invention is to provide positive feed means for removing the stored paper items from a stack at speeds compatible with on line feeding into newspaper streams produced by high speed presses in the order of 60,000 pieces per hour.
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention will be found throughout the following description.